


On the Case

by FalseRoar



Series: Can You Wake Up? [3]
Category: Who Killed Markiplier? (Web Series), markiplier - Fandom
Genre: Detectives, Gen, Humor, POV Second Person, Post-Who Killed Markiplier?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-24 18:55:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20019388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FalseRoar/pseuds/FalseRoar
Summary: A short story in which Abe invites Y/N to be his partner once again, this time on a case to find a stolen pet.





	On the Case

You weren’t entirely sure how you ended up sitting at an outdoor table at a small café with Abe, wearing a Hawaiian-print shirt whose amazingly colorful design was only rivaled by the shirt the Detective himself wore as he scoped out the people passing across the street.

Spite probably had more than a little to do with it, now that you thought about it. The Detective had gotten a hold of your phone number, probably from Tyler, and called to ask if you would be interested in helping out on his latest case. He’d barely offered to pay you before Dark barged into your room at the ego house, grabbed the phone from your hand, and said, “Absolutely not.”

You weren’t even sure if you would have taken the Detective up on his offer if that hadn’t happened, although the idea of spending time with Abe and maybe even having some money of your own was tempting. But then Dark got tired of arguing with you and pulled Mark into it. It was one of the rare times you saw the two of them agree on something, going so far as to “forbid” you from going.

They should have seen this coming, honestly.

Sure, you understood why Abe even calling you “partner” might make the two of them nervous, but it wasn’t even like this was a dangerous case. Apparently, some guy decided to take it out on his ex by stealing her dog, and she hired Abe to get the canine back. Right now, the plan was just to tail the guy back to wherever he was keeping the poor animal, rescue “Thor” (apparently her cat’s name was Loki), and maybe make the guy regret all his decisions going by how Abe described him to you.

Sounded simple enough, to the point you wondered why Abe even called you for help, not that you were going to complain. At least not about that.

“Is this really necessary?” you asked, tugging on the collar of your shirt.

Abe glanced over. “Look, partner, we’ve been over this: you gotta dress the part if you want to blend in.”

“In what reality is this blending in? But that’s not what I meant.” It was true enough that you doubted anything about these shirts could be considered inconspicuous, with the only thing more distracting than the Detective’s shirt was the fact that he somehow managed to find a fedora that matched, but there was another reason you were uncomfortable. You tugged again, this time catching the top of the bulletproof vest underneath your shirt and managing to pull it away slightly. It was hot enough in LA without wearing layers, much less this thing. “Why do I need this vest? I thought the whole plan was to get in and get out.”

“Trust me, you’ll be glad you’re wearing it when you get shot.”

“You mean if I get shot, right?”

“That’s what I said.” Abe glanced at his watch and went back to checking out the clothing store across the street. “He should be leaving work any minute now. Quick, we need to be acting inconspicuous. Pretend like we’re having a conversation.”

“But we are—” You sighed and decided not to bother. “Abe, about the shirts, I don’t know if you noticed, but they kind of stick out.”

“Exactly!” The Detective flashed you a smile and a wink. “No one who’s trying to be sneaky would be stupid enough to wear something like this, so if you think you’re being followed, of course you wouldn’t expect someone dressed like us!”

Deciding it was probably best not to point out Abe may have just called himself stupid, you said, “…Sure, but, I don’t know, it kind of feels like you just finished watching an Ace Ventura movie and wanted to dress the part. Even this case sounds like something that happened in one of the movies.”

“Pfft, that guy?” Abe snorted. “Please, I practically taught him everything he knows. If anyone is copying anyone, it’s him.”

You started to respond to that but hesitated. It wouldn’t be the first time you found something like that to be different from the reality you used to be in until recently, after all. Heck, you passed an electronics store with a set of TVs playing news footage of a superhero decked out in red on the way here, and the only comment anyone else made was to wonder what Silver Shepherd had been up to recently.

While Abe went back to staring at the store in a not at all creepy or suspicious way, you pulled out your phone. It had taken bribing Google to get the android to “adjust” whatever he put in it that allowed Dark to spy on your phone and listen in on your calls, but spending a day keeping Bing away from Google seemed like more than a fair price when you imagined the look on Dark’s face when he finally realized you weren’t spending hours looking at funny cat videos. Even if you weren’t able to sleep for three days after Bing talked you into trying whatever was in that energy drink of his.

“Okay, I just looked, and Jim Carrey totally—”

“Shh, there he is!” Abe reached out without looking to shush you, smacking you in the face with his hand repeatedly as he stared at the bodybuilder type of guy who just walked out of the clothing store. The dude was massive, he could probably pick both of you up at the same time, and he was moving fast.

You both jumped up and trailed him at a distance, Abe making an effort to hide behind lampposts and trashcans even though the guy never once glanced back on his way to a bus stop on the next street over. Fortunately, at this point he put his headphones in and started listening to music so loud you could hear the bass from behind the bush where Abe was whispering (if you could call it that) about how to sneak onto the bus before the doors closed for so long that you two almost missed the bus entirely.

The guy spent the whole ride staring out the window, at least when he wasn’t skimming through Twitter on his phone. Everyone else on the bus kept staring at you and Abe, even though you were sitting in the very back, and it was a relief when your guy finally got off at what looked to be one of the more…questionable neighborhoods, considering the first thing you saw when you and Abe jumped off the bus at the last second was some graffiti of a Septiceye somehow eating a taco.

From there, it was easy enough to follow him to an apartment building, and Abe managed to catch the door before it closed behind him.

“Nice work, partner,” Abe said when you told him you saw which apartment he buzzed to be let in. There didn’t seem to be a doorman, or at least there was nobody behind the desk, and you had the small lobby to yourselves as the Detective laid out his plan.

“I know this place, I’ve had clients here, even lived here once back in…’02? ’92? Something like that, point is, there’s a fire escape that runs up the back of the building, I’ve used it a few times for…reasons. I can use that to go up the back and see if the dog’s here while you distract our buddy boy.”

“Wait, what? How am I supposed to distract him?”

Abe shrugged. “Just knock on the door, strike up a conversation, give me enough time to get in and out with Thor. Easy.”

“Then why don’t you do it?”

“Because I know my way around, and people tend not to trust…Detectives.” He paused, and you could almost see him trying to tell himself that’s the reason why people tended to avoid him. He slapped a hand on your shoulder and smiled. “But you, partner, you’re just the kind of person people want to trust and talk to, get them spilling their secrets after one night of poker I bet.”

You sighed. “I can try, I guess?”

“That’s almost the spirit!” He gave you a wink and he was gone, out to find the fire escape.

By the time you made it upstairs, you thought you had a plan. Just knock, act like you were lost and needed directions, keep him talking…Seriously, it couldn’t be _that_ hard, could it?

First problem? Getting anyone to even hear you knock, with music thudding down the hall so loud you could hear it before you even reached the floor.

Second problem? When someone finally opened the door, you realized that you probably should have expected more than one person in the apartment, considering someone had to buzz and let your guy in, who was currently sitting on the couch with his buddy who, like the one who answered the door, all looked like they could have been made at the same place that distributed massive guys in shirts just tight enough to show every single muscle with faces that looked like they would punch you out for funsies.

“You need something?” The guy at the door asked.

“Uh…” You swallowed and said, “Yeah, I’m looking for a friend? I thought this was his apartment, but, uh…”

“What’s his name?” he asked.

“Jim,” you answered out of reflex.

The guy you tailed jumped up and walked over to the door. “Yeah, I’m Jim, you looking for me?”

Well, that wasn’t even fair.

“No, I mean, I’m looking for a Jim, but he’s like, this tall,” you waved at somewhere around the right height, trying to pretend like you didn’t just see the face outside of the window opposite the door. “Uh, black hair, has a brother…Also named Jim…”

“Hey, is that the guy up on the ninth floor?” Jim asked over his shoulder, and now all three of them were at the door, towering over you.

“Nah, man, that James. Jim’s down the hall.”

“You’re thinking of Jeremy, no one’s coming to see him. You sure you got the right apartment number?”

“I…might have got the number wrong, maybe? This is 7C, right?” You had to give Abe more time.

“Oh, I know!” One of the guys, not Jim, snapped his fingers. “I bet they’re looking for the east building.”

“There’s more than one building?” you asked.

“Yeah, this is the west building, place down the street has the same name, you know?” Jim said. “People get it mixed up all the time.”

“Tell me about it, half the time my mail ends up at the wrong place,” one of the guys muttered.

“Uh, yeah, maybe that’s it. How do you get there from here?”

They started giving directions, before one of them said something about it being late, and this was a weird neighborhood, and from there it snowballed into all three of them walking you down the street, cracking jokes until you got to the door and had to figure out how to get inside the building.

“Hey, Pa—er, Y/N! There you are!”

You’d never been more relieved to hear Abe’s voice, and you had to give him credit for not giving it away when you called him Jim and thanked the guys for helping you find your friend.

Once they were out of earshot, you asked Abe, “So, did you find the dog?”

“Yeah, but there’s a small problem…”

Turns out, Thor was a big dog, as in a German Shepherd who growled like some demon spawn when you and Abe snuck back into the apartment through one of the bedroom windows. The sound failed to reach the guys in the living room thanks to the booming music, but it did little to hide the dog’s teeth. Even though he was in a crate, you weren’t sure that those metal bars could stop him if he really tried to take on these two intruders.

“Shh, good boy,” you said quietly as you edged into the room. Your foot hit something on the floor and you bent down to pick up a well-loved plush monkey. The dog’s ears immediately picked up and you gave it a gentle squeak. “Yeah, you like this, Thor? Come on, who’s a good boy?”

Between you and Abe, you managed to get the dog all the way to the window before you noticed the pictures on the dresser. With a sinking feeling, you checked the dog’s tag and sighed. _Of course._

“Abe?”

“Yeah?” he asked as he looked out the window to make sure the coast was clear.

“I don’t think Jemma here would appreciate us ‘rescuing’ her.”

You didn’t tell Mark or Dark about your case with Abe. If you did, you _probably_ would have left this part out, and skipped straight to where you found the right guy and rescued the real Thor, an adorable Dachshund/basset hound mix who licked your face the entire time you waited outside while Abe found a few things that the cops might be interested in and called in the tip. You also probably would have focused on how happy the client was to get Thor back if you told them about it, even though the proud way Abe called you “Partner” made you smile just as much on your way back home that night.


End file.
